Injected with adrenaline, heavy metal, and buckets of (tiny, pixelated) gore, Juggerdome is a gritty top down arena shooter from Con Artist, creator of Crush the Castle. You are the lucky prisoner chosen to pilot the Juggernaut, a killing machine outfitted with upgradeable weaponry. During each round in the arena you must not only survive onslaughts of machines and armed prisoners, you have to entertain the crowd, too.

Use the [WASD] keys to move the Juggernaut around the arena and the mouse to aim your shots. Two weapons can be equipped simultaneously, controlled with the [spacebar] and mouse buttons, but you have to keep an eye on their respective heat bars, otherwise they won't fire. A non-firing gun is about as useful as a spoon in the arena.

Levels are divided into weekly shows, as if this were a serialized bout in the good ole Flavian Amphitheatre. Each show has a challenge you must complete in order to move on to the next. Seeing as how your alternative is, well, a gory death, staying alive sounds pretty darn good. Sometimes you have to kill a certain number of enemies or stay alive a given amount of time, while other goals are more creative and task you with sitting on control points for a certain amount of time.

After each show, take the cash you earned and upgrade your Jugger as you see fit. New weapons are always nice, as are helpful pieces of gear that make your machine tougher, faster, and more resilient to various kinds of attacks. Depending on your playing style, spend your cash however you like. Just make sure you get the Burninator. That thing rocks.

The chief drawback in Juggerdome is its control scheme. Two weapon slots means two separate keys for firing. One is comfortably tied to the mouse, easy since you're already aiming with it, but the other one is bound to the [spacebar]. It's pretty cumbersome getting used to the awkward controls, as most of the time you'll be moving in one direction, firing in another, and trying to use the [spacebar] to access that secondary weapon for more firepower. Once you play a few matches and can upgrade your weapons, secondary fire becomes much less of an issue, as it's a simple matter to equip a "use sparingly" weapon here and save the big guns for the mouse button.

8 Comments

This is a nice game, and being able to set off traps around the arena is a lot of fun. Except when you hit yourself.

The heat restriction wasn't too stiff. With a heatsink, the heat usually faded before the big guns could even reload.

My main issue was the huge disconnect between the difficulty of prisoners and the difficulty of Juggernauts. Prisoners could be killed in 1 or 2 hits, or simply stepped on, while juggernauts took massed rocket fire to kill and could dish out rockets, grenades, and EMPs as fast as they took them. The one thing that tries to be in between in difficulty is the prisoners who carry rockets, but even those are pathetic. It could use a few lightweight mechs.

The 'secret weapon' is a nice addition to the game, although it's still hard to realize you've unlocked it. The prisoner 1/2 hit kill is quite reasonable, as they really are angry men in orange jumpsuits. If you compare the size the rounds you fire, it is harl surprising. Sadly, other juggernauts are still pretty hard to kill, taking 2,3 even 4 shots of the ultimate weapon (not the laser) to destroy.

he secret weapon is that bomb/missile, slow-firing weapon that the boss has.

Great game, though lag is a big problem.I enjoyed mowing my prisoner lawn down with the spread weapon.

one of the good things about this game is just how fun it is to mow down prisoners, there are hundreds of them and just seeing their pixeled internals become external is just so fun.
the negative thing about this game is lag and the lack of money you get, i mean i bet it takes at least 2 games to use all the weapons and sometimes its just not worth it.

I've got to say, I was really disappointed here. It was a good game and all, but I'm saddened by how little potential there was for blowing stuff up. I mean, the laser takes so long to reload that most earlier weapons are better, especially accounting for how terribly hard it was to aim them. I had to get three of them before it sorta started to be a bit impressive, but I still never hit anything. It worked on the final boss, but only because he's so freaking big.

Personally, I would have put the nuke weapon about halfway through the upgrade path and went upwards from there. There Is No Kill Like Overkill.

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